by immediate rational intuition that, when a thing is intended solely as a means and a path to something else, what is intended for its own sake must be more perfect in existence than what is intended merely as a means to something else. By “superiority” is meant perfection of existence, and by “inferiority,” deficiency of existence. This is rationally intelligible; indeed, most valid demonstrations rest on considerations of this kind. In fact, the innate disposition recognizes such a proposition more clearly than it recognizes many self-evident propositions, because knowledge and love come together in it. It thus remains known through reason, while also being experienced and savored through the heart’s inward awareness, taste, and feeling. It therefore belongs among rational propositions apprehended through the inner sense. Otherwise, would any rational person say that a being whose existence is more perfect than another’s is intended solely as a means to a being beneath it and less perfect than itself?

As for his analogy involving the prophet and the shepherd, the answer is that the source of error in such examples is the confusion of what is intended primarily with what is intended secondarily. The shepherd’s primary aim in tending the sheep is not merely to benefit them without thereby attaining some purpose of his own. Rather, he only